The IAB announced a series of groundbreaking initiatives designed to improve efficiencies by driving industry-wide adoption of critical workflow improvements, best practices and guidelines by media companies and advertising agencies within the digital marketing ecosystem. The announcements were made at the IAB’s annual Ad Operations Summit in New York City, where leaders in advertising operations and account management at media companies and advertising agencies convened to share a 360 degree view of key supply chain areas in interactive marketing.

The following solutions were announced:

•E- Business Interactive Standards, a beta release of an XML-based solution for automating the transfer of business order information between advertising agencies and media companies. Beta testing partners will be implementing and refining this solution throughout 2009. • Interactive Advertising Workflow Best Practices, a document that provides comprehensive process recommendations to agencies and publishers for improved communications and efficient operations throughout the entire lifecycle of an advertising campaign. The document’s best practices focus on how to improve the management of advertising accounts by decreasing discrepancies, campaign set-up errors and billing cycles between advertising agencies and publishers. • Digital Video Ad Serving Template (VAST), an XML-based solution designed to standardize communication between digital video players and servers. VAST allows publishers to increase digital video yield by utilizing ad networks to sell unsold inventory and reduce friction with buyers by allowing third-party ad tags. • Ad Load Performance Best Practices, a document that details how agencies and publishers should develop and serve digital advertising campaigns to reduce load time for ads and improve their performance. • Best Practices for Rich Media Ads in Asynchronous Ad Environments, a solution that establishes a standard set of rich media implementation rules for rich media ad vendors, creative development teams, and publishers when serving ads into dynamic environments.

“These initiatives will revolutionize our industry by improving efficiencies in the interactive business—which means growth for publishers, for agencies and for marketers who will now reach their customers even more effectively,” said Randall Rothenberg, President and CEO of the IAB.

Jeremy Fain, vice president of the IAB, said: “It is time to begin the critical work of adopting these standards and practices across the digital ecosystem and I encourage all stakeholders in the industry to take the necessary steps toward implementation so we can accelerate our trajectory of growth as an industry.”

“For our industry to increase revenues, we have to find efficiencies that help us maximize technology and reduce costs," said Dan Murphy, senior vice president of Research, Univision Online. “By adopting these standards we have the opportunity to make the necessary improvements that will transform the industry into a truly scalable and integrated advertising marketplace.”